Choice or Duty?: Andrija Štampar and Working Under State Socialism

• In Event: Medical Humanities I: Socialist Medicine and Morality in East Central Europe

Abstract

This paper examines how Dr. Andrija Štampar, a prominent physician and health reformer from Yugoslavia, navigated the moral and ideological tensions of representing state socialism globally during the early Cold War period (1946–1956). Štampar’s commitment to advancing rural health through the World Health Organization (WHO) transcended his political reservations about the lack of democracy and the communist regime’s treatment of peasants in Yugoslavia through the forced collectivisation of holdings. By leveraging his international influence, he pursued an extension of the interwar visions of decentralised health governance in Croatia. He prioritised rural health reform over socialist ideological alignments, which he privately disagreed with but openly supported. Štampar’s decision enabled him to play a key role in shaping WHO policy, successfully advocating for the reintegration of rural health and medical education into the organisation’s agenda between 1948 and 1956. Nationally, he maintained a deliberately low profile, delivering neutral and measured public statements about the regime to safeguard his rural healthcare and socio-medical education mission.

Author

• Nicole Albrecht, Georgetown U